Drink of the Week: Cerveza Indio

Unless you've been living under a rock, you have to know that Indio beer has started being imported from Mexico into the United States. There are billboards; there are giant posters in liquor store and convenience store windows; there are radio ads in two languages. Suddenly, everyone seems to have pitched their squat cans of PBR for brown bottles of Indio.

Indio's the beer of choice in dive bars on Tijuana's Sixth Street and pretty much the official beverage of El Dandy del Sur, and makes a nice michelada with a little more oomph than Pacífico. It's a great cool-down with a small bowl of Murky Jerky.

Yet for all its hype, this is no microbrew; it's brewed by one of the two enormous brewing companies in Mexico, Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma from distant, industrial Monterrey. Indio's claim to fame is that it's an alternative to the yellow soda type of Mexican beer. It's definitely malty, like a Märzen, but it's still as thin as any fizzy Mexican lager. That's its beauty--you can drink something with a little taste, and when it's as hot as it has been, you can suck down a six-pack, be refreshed, and not get drunk.

Request to the estimados señores at Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma: please send some casks up here to one of the beer bars, because Indio de barril is one of the most refreshing things to drink south of the border.